Success 2008: award winner from the coatings industry

SOVA GmbH from Kamp-Bornhofen received the sponsorship award for medium-sized companies "Success 2008" for the development of a new method of tinting coating materials. The award was presented by Economics Minister Hendrik Hering at a ceremony held in Mainz on 27 October 2008. 

The Success competition is organised by the state-owned “Investitions- und Strukturbank Rheinland-Pfalz (ISB)” which, as a central funding institute of the state, wishes to give a clear signal for sponsoring innovative spirit and ingenuity in Rhineland-Palatinate. The competition is aimed at small and medium-sized companies which have successfully developed and marketed a new product or an innovative method in the past year. The criteria for the evaluation are the novelty value of and the turnover generated by the innovation. A total of eleven innovative companies based in Rhineland-Palatinate were awarded a certificate and a cash prize in the 2008 competition, which has existed since 1998.

SOVA GmbH from Kamp-Bornhofen, manufacturer of paints, renders and external wall insulation systems for the trade, convinced the jury with a newly developed method of tinting coating materials for façades. With this method, environmentally friendly granular pigments made by BASF and sold under the trade name Xfast are used instead of liquid pigment preparations. Thanks to modified base materials and a specially designed handling, SOVA has for the first time succeeded in processing these pigments in a reproducible manner using a standard biaxial mixer. The originally calculated investment requirement for new tinting systems in branches could thus be reduced by 50 % and the future maintenance requirement even by about 75 %. The method has been applied for 12 months now and has proved very successful in practice.

During the festive ceremony held in the foyer of the ISB in Mainz on 27 October 2008, Economics Minister Hendrik Hering emphasised that the innovative strength of small and medium-sized companies is much higher than generally assumed. The award, he continued, is designed as an incentive for all companies which will also in future be backing the development of innovative products and methods, and according to the Minister this is the correct answer to the present financial crisis.

Under the heading “Innovation Trick: what successful companies have in common“ the President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Bullinger, explained in his official speech which measures successful companies can use to foster their employees’ innovative spirit. That size really does not matter in this context has been proven by SOVA GmbH and ten other forward-looking companies from Rhineland-Palatinate in an impressive manner.